On to the Goal

When I launched this blog on Tuesday, I remarked that late February was a terrible time to start a college football blog. True. You know when else is a bad time to start a college football blog? Four days before you’re scheduled to go on a week-long vacation. At least I’m going to Florida. Anyway, I might have regular Internet access, I probably won’t. So in the unlikely event that someone I don’t know personally is reading this site, I promise I haven’t quit. Anyway, some quick-hitting links and then we out.

Could Charlie Strong’s shot at head coaching come at… Florida?!?

I didn’t post this yesterday because I was thinking of making an extended piece out of it, but life got in the way. Interesting item, however, from Andrea Adelson of the Orlando Sentinel: Should UF follow the hottest trend in coaching and make Charlie Strong its coach-in-waiting? Remember, this is merely speculative offseason fodder, but I would come down emphatically in the “no” camp, at least for now. If you look at the other schools who have gone the coach-in-waiting route, all of the incumbent head men are getting up there in age or tenure or both:

• Florida State: Bobby Bowden, age 79, entering 34th season at FSU
• Kentucky: Rich Brooks, age 67, entering 7th season (coached from 1977-94 at Oregon)
• Maryland: Ralph Friedgen, age 61, entering 9th season
• Oregon: Mike Belotti, age 58, entering 16th season
• Texas: Mack Brown, age 57, entering 12th season

Florida, with 44-year-old Urban Meyer entering just his 5th season, doesn’t seem to belong on that list. At least not right now.

UPDATE: A friend of mine just pointed out that, at 48, Strong is older than the head coach he’d be slated to replace. That’s not the case at any of the other aforementioned schools. So there’s that, too.

Just when you were tired of talking about high school kids

The Gators pick up a commitment for the 2010 recruiting class in Charlotte, N.C. Independence cornerback Victor Hampton. It’s still a bit early for star rankings and recruiting buzz not locked behind a paywall, but a quick scan of Hampton’s other offers on Rivals seems to bode well. Because, you know, the last time the Gators got an early commit from a highly touted corner prospect, it worked out great.

Nu’Keese Richardson is probably not Reggie Bush

Don’t try to tell that to the Tennessee coaching staff, though.

Tebow is already chiseled granite anyway

Michael J. Mooney of the Broward-Palm Beach News Times thinks Florida’s Mount Rushmore of Sports (ESPN’s latest absurd marketing promotion for SportsCenter) is shaky and the reason is Tim Tebow. Doesn’t he know that Tebow is 250 pounds of concrete cyanide, man? You need that kind of ballast in your mountain, brah.

Ahmad Black keeps the hits on coming

Joseph Goodman of the Miami Herald catches up with Ahmad Black the Gators’ returning starter at strong safety. Black is having a pretty typical offseason, with activities such as weightlifting, visiting his former high school and crashing his car into teammate Dustin Doe’s ride.

One more time? Sure, why not:

It’s the offseason, let’s manufacture a recruiting drama

It’s not quite Kiffinesque or anything, but this slightly bizarre item from the Atlanta Journal Constitution indicates that the relationship between Urban Meyer and Tampa Plant head coach Robert Weiner is becoming/is already strained. Even after several reads of the article, it’s tough to tell whether this relates to a specific incident, and tougher still to determine what, if any, impact it had on Orson Charles’ recent decision to drop Florida from his list of suitors. Of course, commenter “get a life people” reminds me that it’s kind of creepy that I care in the first place:

Grown men who get pissy over an 18 year old kids choice of which college to attend really, really need to get a grip.

OK, but just to be on the safe side, let’s all have a big hug.

Hugs!

Riley Cooper goes deep, but will he be gone?

Gator wide receiver Riley Cooper launched a grand slam home run in the Florida baseball team’s 17-6 rout of Eastern Michigan. As a high schooler, Cooper was both a four-star receiver/safety prospect (rated the #10 ATH by Rivals) and a 15th-round baseball draft pick to the Philadelphia Phillies.

In fact, Cooper’s future on the diamond may take him away from UF football. Lost in the shuffle of hype and Harvin-watching leading up to the BCS title game was this item (towards the end) in which Cooper indicated that a baseball career may be hard to pass up. For what it’s worth, the forums seem to concur, as does NFL Draft Scout, which appears to have been designed by a bored dot-com staffer on a lunch break in 1998.

Is Omar Hunter on NutriSystem?

Jeremy Fowler, liveblogging through the magic of WiFi from Section H of the Swamp, says defensive tackle Omar Hunter, erstwhile uber-recruit of 2008, has shed some pounds. But has he lost the equivalent of a fourth grader? Fowler elaborates, in what I’m sure is a statement 100-percent free of hyperbole:

Though I did see linebacker Brandon Spikes and defensive tackle Omar Hunter riding on separate Vespas outside of The Swamp. Hunter looks a lot thinner. He might be Tebow’s size.

Hunter’s listed weight from last season was 315 pounds, 75 more than Tebow. Again, I stress listed weight. As with many big teenagers, Hunter looked like he had a lot to gain (or is it lose?) from participating in college conditioning and nutrition programs. Then again, maybe he was able to trim down by EATING LIKE A MAN AND STILL LOSING WEIGHT:

(By the way, I promise to reference Larry the Cable Guy only when absolutely necessary. Like when he appears in a commercial with Dan Marino, only Marino is also wearing a flannel shirt with the sleeves cut off.)

In any event, a svelte, healthy Hunter would be a fantastic addition to the interior of the Gator defensive line, which was perilously thin towards the end of last season.

Photo of Meyer via the AP.

Not a huge shock given the buzz in recent days, but Orson Charles, an elite tight end prospect who has yet to sign a national letter of intent, has eliminated Florida from his list of prospective schools. He will pick between USC, Georgia and Tennessee. Orson Swindle is surely disappointed.

You may remember Charles as the guy who accidentally broke one of Florida’s 2006 BCS Championship crystal ball trophies while at a Florida football camp. If Charles signs with another SEC school, you will be reminded of this fact often. Pray, sinner, that Thom Brennaman is not hired by a network that still covers college football.

For his part, Charles seemed to handle the matter in a classy fashion, at least to the extent possible through, um, a text message:

“I appreciate Florida’s interest. I think very highly of Coach Meyer and the Gators,” Charles said in the message. “This was a tough decision for my family. Please understand me and my family’s call. Thank you and God bless.”

Fair enough. I wish Charles the best of luck. Unless he signs with Georgia or Tennessee, in which case he sucks and we didn’t want him and HAVE FUN CATCHING FIVE PASSES A YEAR IN A PRO-STYLE OFFENSE, LOSER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As for the Gators, this decision has several impacts, none of them of what would typically be called “good.” For one, it cements UF’s 2009 recruiting class at 16 signees. They’re good signees by all appearances, but that’s a small class. Second, it leaves Florida with just two tight ends on the roster going into next season, junior Aaron Hernandez and true freshman Desmond Parks. In Hernandez, the Gators have a beastly stud of a player, but considering Parks’ youth and middling recruiting hype (he was a consensus 3-star guy, considered a potential steal but a definite project), Florida could have used another end of the tight variety. Adding a final sting, Charles is considered more of a wide receiver/tight end hybrid and has drawn comparisons to (wait for it) Cornelius Ingram… …but other than that we didn’t need him.

Of course Florida played the 2008 season with just Hernandez and the since-graduated Tate Casey at tight end, so everything’s cool assuming good health and so on. The Meyer offense is also famously adaptable to personnel (it’s changed to varying degrees every year at Florida) so come fall the Gators should be racking up zillions of points as per usual. In fact, the real impact might not be felt until Hernandez is gone to the NFL.

UPDATE: Yesterday I posted a link to a Gainesville Sun article about UF footbal and basketball players visiting the same barber. Let’s just hope that doesn’t lead to disaster like it apparently did at USC.

Somewhere, Tommie Frazier is breaking another tackle

David Wunderlich of Year 2 breaks down a few Florida option plays on Bleacher Report. The first line is the best: “As unbelievable as it would have sounded in 1996, Florida has turned into one of the best option football teams in the country.” Sure, it’s not the absurdly unstoppable option-I offense that Frazier and Nebraska used to brutalize the Gators in the 1996 Fiesta Bowl, but seeing the Gators run the option to deadly success is indeed a strange departure from the Spurrier era.

(And for no reason in particular, here’s Florida’s 2000 passing playbook.)

Has Lane Kiffin heard about this?

Ben Volin of the Palm Beach Post delves into the tight relationship between Urban Meyer and Bill Belichick. The comments on the article follow the predictable “He’s a cheater! We don’t want to be associated with him!” theme, but believe me, if your college football team’s head coach is compared in earnest to Belichick, you have it very, very good. Percy Harvin on the relationship:

“Coach Meyer tries to imitate him to a tee … We did a lot of things that the Patriots did. Ran a lot of their plays.”

Volin also links to an article on the Patriots Web site about an enticing crop of tight ends including Cornelius Ingram, but if the Patriots draft a Gator this year, I’d like it to be Percy Harvin if only because Belichick would be one of a handful of coaches who would actually use him to his full potential. Harvin should be a solid receiver in any system, but he has a chance to be special with a coach who will tweak the offense to get the ball in his hands in a variety of ways. Sort of like Urban Meyer. Who is like Bill Belichick. You get the point.

No change in ticket prices

Assuming you can, you know, get tickets, you won’t have to pay any more than you did this year to see the Gators play at the swamp next season. Well that’s a relief.

According to multiple published reports, offensive lineman Carl Johnson’s hearing has been delayed until April 7 at the request of the petitioner. For those calendar enthusiasts out there, that’s smack in the middle of spring practice, which begins March 25 and ends with the Orange and Blue game on April 18. So far we’ve heard nothing regarding Johnson’s status with the team, but spring ball is an important time for an aspiring starter, especially one transitioning back to tackle from guard. With that in mind, the longer this gets stretched out, the worse the on-field ramifications get.

Late February is a bad time to start a college football blog. The furor around national signing day has died down along with (we hope) the volley of text messages from middle-aged sportswriters to 17-year-old boys. Spring football – the second-most reliable source of offseason “news” after police reports and county jail manifests – is still weeks away. The end of winter is, in no uncertain terms, a content wasteland.

It is into this breach that On to the Goal boldly steps.

That’s it for now. No mission statement. No manifesto. Just a Gator blog blinking into existence in an hour of need.

In the coming weeks and months, I hope this blog will do its small part to enrich the Interwebs with lively, insightful, humorous and (above all) rational commentary on Gator football and related issues. We’ll see how it unfolds. For now, I’ll begin with what will be a staple of this blog (and, uh, pretty much every other blog, actually): A morning compilation of links accompanied by brief bursts of woefully out-of-context commentary. Without further ado:

Whither Carl Johnson?

Offensive lineman Carl Johnson is scheduled to appear in Alachua County court right about… now-ish. From every published report I’ve read, it’s unclear what today’s hearing will actually uncover, if anything, but it could be a significant day for the Florida football program. Johson (whose name may not appear in print unless accompanied by the requisite “rising junior-to-be” tag) seemed poised to fill one of the Gators’ two vacant tackle positions, but that’s an ancillary concern at this point. If the widely reported allegations leveled at Johnson are even remotely true, it will mark the third “totally messed up” crime committed by a Gator in the past 12 months. Football aside, here’s hoping this isn’t actually a horrible situation.

Add “auctioneer” to football player, humanitarian, doctor…

Tim Tebow, who stunned no one in winning this year’s Wuerffel Award, helped increase the bidding on an always popular auction item: Four tickets to watch Florida beat Georgia.

Joe Haden apparently has the same barber as… Chandler Parsons?

This guy gets his hair cut at the same place as this guy. Who knew.

Has Meyer’s NFL window closed?

Sam Farmer of the the Los Angeles Times makes an interesting case. One less thing for University of Florida President Bernie Machen to worry about, perhaps?

HT: The Wiz.